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Method that takes a message and index, creates a substring using the index

Problem: I want to write a method that takes a message/index pair like this:
("Hello, I am *Name1, how are you doing *Name2?", 2)
The index refers to the asterisk delimited name in the message. So if the index is 1, it should refer to *Name1, if it's 2 it should refer to *Name2.
The method should return just the name with the asterisk (*Name2).
I have attempted to play around with substrings, taking the first delimited * and ending when we reach a character that isn't a letter, number, underscore or hyphen, but the logic just isn't setting in.
I know this is similar to a few problems on SO but I can't find anything this specific. Any help is appreciated.
This is what's left of my very vague attempt so far. Based on this thread:
public string GetIndexedNames(string message, int index)
{
int strStart = message.IndexOf("#") + "#".Length;
int strEnd = message.LastIndexOf(" ");
String result = message.Substring(strStart, strEnd - strStart);
}

If you want to do it the old school way, then something like:
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
string message = "Hello, I am *Name1, how are you doing *Name2?";
string name1 = GetIndexedNames(message, "*", 1);
string name2 = GetIndexedNames(message, "*", 2);
Console.WriteLine(message);
Console.WriteLine(name1);
Console.WriteLine(name2);
Console.ReadLine();
}
public static string GetIndexedNames(string message, string singleCharDelimiter, int index)
{
string valid = "abcdefghijlmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789_-";
string[] parts = message.Split(singleCharDelimiter.ToArray());
if (parts.Length >= index)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
for(int i = 0; i < parts[index].Length; i++)
{
string character = parts[index].Substring(i, 1);
if (valid.Contains(character))
{
sb.Append(character);
}
else
{
return sb.ToString();
}
}
return sb.ToString();
}
return "";
}

You can try using regular expressions to match the names. Assuming that name is a sequence of word characters (letters or digits):
using System.Linq;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
...
// Either name with asterisk *Name or null
// index is 1-based
private static ObtainName(string source, int index) => Regex
.Matches(source, #"\*\w+")
.Cast<Match>()
.Select(match => match.Value)
.Distinct() // in case the same name repeats several times
.ElementAtOrDefault(index - 1);
Demo:
string name = ObtainName(
"Hello, I am *Name1, how are you doing *Name2?", 2);
Console.Write(name);
Outcome:
*Name2

Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but if you want to use IndexOf, use a loop:
public static string GetIndexedNames(string message, int index, char marker='*')
{
int lastFound = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < index; i++) {
lastFound = message.IndexOf(marker, lastFound+1);
if (lastFound == -1) return null;
}
var space = message.IndexOf(' ', lastFound);
return space == -1 ? message.Substring(lastFound) : message.Substring(lastFound, space - lastFound);
}

how do find the same string and difference string in List<string>?

I have list like this:
List<string> myList = new List<string>()
{
"AS2258B43C014AI9954803",
"AS2258B43C014AI9954603",
"AS2258B43C014AI9954703",
"AS2258B43C014AI9954503",
"AS2258B43C014AI9954403",
"AS2258B43C014AI9954203",
"AS2258B43C014AI9954303",
"AS2258B43C014AI9954103",
};
I want to output something format is sameString+diffString0\diffString1\diffString2.... like this "AS2258B43C014AI9954803\603\703\503\403\203\303\103"
what should I do?

You can create a method which returns you the difference between to strings:
private static string GetDiff (string s1, string s2)
{
int i;
for(i = 0; i < Math.Min(s1.Length,s2.Length); i++)
{
if(s1[i] != s2[i])
{
break;
}
}
return s2.Substring(i);
}
This method iterats until the first character which is different and returns the remaining characters of the second string.
With that method, you can obtain your result with the LINQ query:
string first = myList[0];
string result = first + "/" + string.Join("/", myList.Skip(1).Select(x => GetDiff(first,x)));
Online demo: https://dotnetfiddle.net/TPkhmz

Alphanumeric sorting using LINQ
Create static method for pads
public static string PadNumbers(string input)
{
return Regex.Replace(input, "[0-9]+", match => match.Value.PadLeft(10, '0'));
}
then call it
var result = myList.OrderBy(x => PadNumbers(x));
after that you can find the difference

The simplest solution is to create a function like this :
public static string Output(List<String> ListString)
{
string sameString = ListString.First().Substring(0, 18);
string output = sameString;
foreach (var item in ListString)
{
output += item.Substring(19);
output += "\\";
}
return output.Substring(0, output.Length - 1);
}

How to remove all but the first occurences of a character from a string?

I have a string of text and want to ensure that it contains at most one single occurrence of a specific character (,). Therefore I want to keep the first one, but simply remove all further occurrences of that character.
How could I do this the most elegant way using C#?

This works, but not the most elegant for sure :-)
string a = "12,34,56,789";
int pos = 1 + a.IndexOf(',');
return a.Substring(0, pos) + a.Substring(pos).Replace(",", string.Empty);

You could use a counter variable and a StringBuilder to create the new string efficiently:
var sb = new StringBuilder(text.Length);
int maxCount = 1;
int currentCount = 0;
char specialChar = ',';
foreach(char c in text)
if(c != specialChar || ++currentCount <= maxCount)
sb.Append(c);
text = sb.ToString();
This approach is not the shortest but it's efficient and you can specify the char-count to keep.
Here's a more "elegant" way using LINQ:
int commasFound = 0; int maxCommas = 1;
text = new string(text.Where(c => c != ',' || ++commasFound <= maxCommas).ToArray());
I don't like it because it requires to modify a variable from a query, so it's causing a side-effect.

Regular expressions are elegant, right?
Regex.Replace("Eats, shoots, and leaves.", #"(?<=,.*),", "");
This replaces every comma, as long as there is a comma before it, with nothing.
(Actually, it's probably not elegant - it may only be one line of code, but it may also be O(n^2)...)

If you don't deal with large strings and you reaaaaaaly like Linq oneliners:
public static string KeepFirstOccurence (this string #string, char #char)
{
var index = #string.IndexOf(#char);
return String.Concat(String.Concat(#string.TakeWhile(x => #string.IndexOf(x) < index + 1)), String.Concat(#string.SkipWhile(x=>#string.IndexOf(x) < index)).Replace(#char.ToString(), ""));
}

You could write a function like the following one that would split the string into two sections based on the location of what you were searching (via the String.Split() method) for and it would only remove matches from the second section (using String.Replace()) :
public static string RemoveAllButFirst(string s, string stuffToRemove)
{
// Check if the stuff to replace exists and if not, return the original string
var locationOfStuff = s.IndexOf(stuffToRemove);
if (locationOfStuff < 0)
{
return s;
}
// Calculate where to pull the first string from and then replace the rest of the string
var splitLocation = locationOfStuff + stuffToRemove.Length;
return s.Substring(0, splitLocation) + (s.Substring(splitLocation)).Replace(stuffToRemove,"");
}
You could simply call it by using :
var output = RemoveAllButFirst(input,",");
A prettier approach might actually involve building an extension method that handled this a bit more cleanly :
public static class StringExtensions
{
public static string RemoveAllButFirst(this string s, string stuffToRemove)
{
// Check if the stuff to replace exists and if not, return the
// original string
var locationOfStuff = s.IndexOf(stuffToRemove);
if (locationOfStuff < 0)
{
return s;
}
// Calculate where to pull the first string from and then replace the rest of the string
var splitLocation = locationOfStuff + stuffToRemove.Length;
return s.Substring(0, splitLocation) + (s.Substring(splitLocation)).Replace(stuffToRemove,"");
}
}
which would be called via :
var output = input.RemoveAllButFirst(",");
You can see a working example of it here.

static string KeepFirstOccurance(this string str, char c)
{
int charposition = str.IndexOf(c);
return str.Substring(0, charposition + 1) +
str.Substring(charposition, str.Length - charposition)
.Replace(c, ' ').Trim();
}

Pretty short with Linq; split string into chars, keep distinct set and join back to a string.
text = string.Join("", text.Select(c => c).Distinct());

Add separator to string at every N characters?

I have a string which contains binary digits. How to separate string after each 8 digit?
Suppose the string is:
string x = "111111110000000011111111000000001111111100000000";
I want to add a separator like ,(comma) after each 8 character.
output should be :
"11111111,00000000,11111111,00000000,11111111,00000000,"
Then I want to send it to a list<> last 8 char 1st then the previous 8 chars(excepting ,) and so on.
How can I do this?

Regex.Replace(myString, ".{8}", "$0,");
If you want an array of eight-character strings, then the following is probably easier:
Regex.Split(myString, "(?<=^(.{8})+)");
which will split the string only at points where a multiple of eight characters precede it.

Try this:
var s = "111111110000000011111111000000001111111100000000";
var list = Enumerable
.Range(0, s.Length/8)
.Select(i => s.Substring(i*8, 8));
var res = string.Join(",", list);

There's another Regex approach:
var str = "111111110000000011111111000000001111111100000000";
# for .NET 4
var res = String.Join(",",Regex.Matches(str, #"\d{8}").Cast<Match>());
# for .NET 3.5
var res = String.Join(",", Regex.Matches(str, #"\d{8}")
.OfType<Match>()
.Select(m => m.Value).ToArray());

...or old school:
public static List<string> splitter(string in, out string csv)
{
if (in.length % 8 != 0) throw new ArgumentException("in");
var lst = new List<string>(in/8);
for (int i=0; i < in.length / 8; i++) lst.Add(in.Substring(i*8,8));
csv = string.Join(",", lst); //This we want in input order (I believe)
lst.Reverse(); //As we want list in reverse order (I believe)
return lst;
}

Ugly but less garbage:
private string InsertStrings(string s, int insertEvery, char insert)
{
char[] ins = s.ToCharArray();
int length = s.Length + (s.Length / insertEvery);
if (ins.Length % insertEvery == 0)
{
length--;
}
var outs = new char[length];
long di = 0;
long si = 0;
while (si < s.Length - insertEvery)
{
Array.Copy(ins, si, outs, di, insertEvery);
si += insertEvery;
di += insertEvery;
outs[di] = insert;
di ++;
}
Array.Copy(ins, si, outs, di, ins.Length - si);
return new string(outs);
}
String overload:
private string InsertStrings(string s, int insertEvery, string insert)
{
char[] ins = s.ToCharArray();
char[] inserts = insert.ToCharArray();
int insertLength = inserts.Length;
int length = s.Length + (s.Length / insertEvery) * insert.Length;
if (ins.Length % insertEvery == 0)
{
length -= insert.Length;
}
var outs = new char[length];
long di = 0;
long si = 0;
while (si < s.Length - insertEvery)
{
Array.Copy(ins, si, outs, di, insertEvery);
si += insertEvery;
di += insertEvery;
Array.Copy(inserts, 0, outs, di, insertLength);
di += insertLength;
}
Array.Copy(ins, si, outs, di, ins.Length - si);
return new string(outs);
}

If I understand your last requirement correctly (it's not clear to me if you need the intermediate comma-delimited string or not), you could do this:
var enumerable = "111111110000000011111111000000001111111100000000".Batch(8).Reverse();
By utilizing morelinq.

Here my two little cents too. An implementation using StringBuilder:
public static string AddChunkSeparator (string str, int chunk_len, char separator)
{
if (str == null || str.Length < chunk_len) {
return str;
}
StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
for (var index = 0; index < str.Length; index += chunk_len) {
builder.Append(str, index, chunk_len);
builder.Append(separator);
}
return builder.ToString();
}
You can call it like this:
string data = "111111110000000011111111000000001111111100000000";
string output = AddChunkSeparator(data, 8, ',');

One way using LINQ:
string data = "111111110000000011111111000000001111111100000000";
const int separateOnLength = 8;
string separated = new string(
data.Select((x,i) => i > 0 && i % separateOnLength == 0 ? new [] { ',', x } : new [] { x })
.SelectMany(x => x)
.ToArray()
);

I did it using Pattern & Matcher as following way:
fun addAnyCharacter(input: String, insertion: String, interval: Int): String {
val pattern = Pattern.compile("(.{$interval})", Pattern.DOTALL)
val matcher = pattern.matcher(input)
return matcher.replaceAll("$1$insertion")
}
Where:
input indicates Input string. Check results section.
insertion indicates Insert string between those characters. For example comma (,), start(*), hash(#).
interval indicates at which interval you want to add insertion character.
input indicates Input string. Check results section. Check results section; here I've added insertion at every 4th character.
Results:
I/P: 1234XXXXXXXX5678 O/P: 1234 XXXX XXXX 5678
I/P: 1234567812345678 O/P: 1234 5678 1234 5678
I/P: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP O/P: ABCD EFGH IJKL MNOP
Hope this helps.

As of .Net 6, you can simply use the IEnumerable.Chunk method (Which splits elements of a sequence into chunks) then reconcatenate the chunks using String.Join.
var text = "...";
string.Join(',', text.Chunk(size: 6).Select(x => new string(x)));

This is much faster without copying array (this version inserts space every 3 digits but you can adjust it to your needs)
public string GetString(double valueField)
{
char[] ins = valueField.ToString().ToCharArray();
int length = ins.Length + (ins.Length / 3);
if (ins.Length % 3 == 0)
{
length--;
}
char[] outs = new char[length];
int i = length - 1;
int j = ins.Length - 1;
int k = 0;
do
{
if (k == 3)
{
outs[i--] = ' ';
k = 0;
}
else
{
outs[i--] = ins[j--];
k++;
}
}
while (i >= 0);
return new string(outs);
}

For every 1 character, you could do this one-liner:
string.Join(".", "1234".ToArray()) //result: 1.2.3.4

If you intend to create your own function to acheive this without using regex or pattern matching methods, you can create a simple function like this:
String formatString(String key, String seperator, int afterEvery){
String formattedKey = "";
for(int i=0; i<key.length(); i++){
formattedKey += key.substring(i,i+1);
if((i+1)%afterEvery==0)
formattedKey += seperator;
}
if(formattedKey.endsWith("-"))
formattedKey = formattedKey.substring(0,formattedKey.length()-1);
return formattedKey;
}
Calling the mothod like this
formatString("ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST", "-", 4)
Would result in the return string as this
ABCD-EFGH-IJKL-MNOP-QRST

A little late to the party, but here's a simplified LINQ expression to break an input string x into groups of n separated by another string sep:
string sep = ",";
int n = 8;
string result = String.Join(sep, x.InSetsOf(n).Select(g => new String(g.ToArray())));
A quick rundown of what's happening here:
x is being treated as an IEnumerable<char>, which is where the InSetsOf extension method comes in.
InSetsOf(n) groups characters into an IEnumerable of IEnumerable -- each entry in the outer grouping contains an inner group of n characters.
Inside the Select method, each group of n characters is turned back into a string by using the String() constructor that takes an array of chars.
The result of Select is now an IEnumerable<string>, which is passed into String.Join to interleave the sep string, just like any other example.

I am more than late with my answer but you can use this one:
static string PutLineBreak(string str, int split)
{
for (int a = 1; a <= str.Length; a++)
{
if (a % split == 0)
str = str.Insert(a, "\n");
}
return str;
}

How to remove leading zeros using C#

How to remove leading zeros in strings using C#?
For example in the following numbers, I would like to remove all the leading zeros.
0001234
0000001234
00001234

This is the code you need:
string strInput = "0001234";
strInput = strInput.TrimStart('0');

It really depends on how long the NVARCHAR is, as a few of the above (especially the ones that convert through IntXX) methods will not work for:
String s = "005780327584329067506780657065786378061754654532164953264952469215462934562914562194562149516249516294563219437859043758430587066748932647329814687194673219673294677438907385032758065763278963247982360675680570678407806473296472036454612945621946";
Something like this would
String s ="0000058757843950000120465875468465874567456745674000004000".TrimStart(new Char[] { '0' } );
// s = "58757843950000120465875468465874567456745674000004000"

Code to avoid returning an empty string ( when input is like "00000").
string myStr = "00012345";
myStr = myStr.TrimStart('0');
myStr = myStr.Length > 0 ? myStr : "0";

return numberString.TrimStart('0');

Using the following will return a single 0 when input is all 0.
string s = "0000000"
s = int.Parse(s).ToString();

TryParse works if your number is less than Int32.MaxValue. This also gives you the opportunity to handle badly formatted strings. Works the same for Int64.MaxValue and Int64.TryParse.
int number;
if(Int32.TryParse(nvarchar, out number))
{
// etc...
number.ToString();
}

This Regex let you avoid wrong result with digits which consits only from zeroes "0000" and work on digits of any length:
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
/*
00123 => 123
00000 => 0
00000a => 0a
00001a => 1a
00001a => 1a
0000132423423424565443546546356546454654633333a => 132423423424565443546546356546454654633333a
*/
Regex removeLeadingZeroesReg = new Regex(#"^0+(?=\d)");
var strs = new string[]
{
"00123",
"00000",
"00000a",
"00001a",
"00001a",
"0000132423423424565443546546356546454654633333a",
};
foreach (string str in strs)
{
Debug.Print(string.Format("{0} => {1}", str, removeLeadingZeroesReg.Replace(str, "")));
}
And this regex will remove leading zeroes anywhere inside string:
new Regex(#"(?<!\d)0+(?=\d)");
// "0000123432 d=0 p=002 3?0574 m=600"
// => "123432 d=0 p=2 3?574 m=600"

Regex rx = new Regex(#"^0+(\d+)$");
rx.Replace("0001234", #"$1"); // => "1234"
rx.Replace("0001234000", #"$1"); // => "1234000"
rx.Replace("000", #"$1"); // => "0" (TrimStart will convert this to "")
// usage
var outString = rx.Replace(inputString, #"$1");

I just crafted this as I needed a good, simple way.
If it gets to the final digit, and if it is a zero, it will stay.
You could also use a foreach loop instead for super long strings.
I just replace each leading oldChar with the newChar.
This is great for a problem I just solved, after formatting an int into a string.
/* Like this: */
int counterMax = 1000;
int counter = ...;
string counterString = counter.ToString($"D{counterMax.ToString().Length}");
counterString = RemoveLeadingChars('0', ' ', counterString);
string fullCounter = $"({counterString}/{counterMax})";
// = ( 1/1000) ... ( 430/1000) ... (1000/1000)
static string RemoveLeadingChars(char oldChar, char newChar, char[] chars)
{
string result = "";
bool stop = false;
for (int i = 0; i < chars.Length; i++)
{
if (i == (chars.Length - 1)) stop = true;
if (!stop && chars[i] == oldChar) chars[i] = newChar;
else stop = true;
result += chars[i];
}
return result;
}
static string RemoveLeadingChars(char oldChar, char newChar, string text)
{
return RemoveLeadingChars(oldChar, newChar, text.ToCharArray());
}
I always tend to make my functions suitable for my own library, so there are options.